Don't worry guys, server Jinsoyun has had their Marketplace and Character Info partially unavailable for a while now. Managed to bring it up with the dev team yet? Take your time, only 2 years went by after all. Happy Anniversary by the way.

This forum is basically a cesspool. This thread is proof of that.
Almost everyone edited XML files for convenience to bypass idiotic game designs, not to "cheat". I can personally barely see myself playing this game actively without the instant Transmutation/Box Opening/Upgrades/Salvaging and I don't know why on earth the developers thought it would be fun (well, probably to generate a similar addiction effect to slot machines, very healthy game!) to have to needlessly wait 3 seconds when you need to open boxes and salvage items all the time. It's plain ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤. I've been swearing at this game since I swapped over to the NC Launcher this weekend since it took so long to clear my inventory after doing my daily quests.
In other words, any active player in Blade & Soul uses some sort of client editing to make their experience better. That means if something like BnsBuddy is done for, so is most of the game. Hell, cause of third party launchers, we could finally stop crashing in Battlegrounds. Holy hell. I can't express the pure distaste I have for NCWEST as a company. A third-party developer fixed the infamous crash issue in Battlegrounds while the team of monkeys behind this game couldn't even find what the issue was, and even after they fixed your incompetent development team's faults, you have done absolutely nothing to replicate their fix. Hell, now that the cause of the issue is out there, maybe you could even find the underlying issue? Was that ever a train of thoughts at anyone in your office?
I'm guessing encrypting XML and DAT files means we can still use mods to fix the issue, just without the convenience of doing it with a simple click, but this feels more like a big finger to the community. Rather than messing the game up more than it already is, just enable a simple skill check? Why on earth does the server allow the client to use any skill it likes to in the first place?
Client modifications were the only thing making this game playable for so many. Put in proper effort into the server-side of things rather than have more people stop playing the game.

From the looks of it, no one in my raid were suspended after clearing all Scarlet Conservatory bosses. I'm guessing someone who did exploit a game mechanic was just also one of the people doing the Demonize mechanic, so people assumed.
It should be safe.

Thanks for the announcement Justin.
Could you fill us in on the exact scope of which accounts are deemed to take advantage of the exploits? Did your previous stance on client configurations (that doesn't grant unintended gameplay advantages) change any, by which I mean altering things to, for example, remove the Transmute animation, remove countdown for opening Chests/Boxes/Pouches, or enhance performance by measures like the DirectX912pxy and disabling class skill animations?
I think a lot of us, me included, are scared to change anything now. Performance without any adjustment was quite horrific when raiding this Wednesday.
Thanks in advance!

Are you drunk? They HAVE already decided. That's the thing. They made the decision to start suspending people's accounts through a filter and a community moderator who I hope to god has knowledge of the game was most likely informed. The only part missing in all this is the fundamental part of making sure we, as in the playerbase, gets to know what's going on.
What I'm asking for is nothing more than acknowledgement. Like Russia's team, state what the ongoing issues is for those who are uninformed and mention what they've already began doing: suspending accounts, but that more information will come later. Once their full team is back in their office and can properly discuss the issue can they update us on the full details.
All they would have to do is acknowledge an issue which the community managed to figure out on our own, like most things when it comes to the transparency of NCWEST. You cannot in any way, shape or form defend them for failing in keeping their community in the loop when seemingly half the community suddenly can't log in to the game.

How is that a valid excuse? Check the DevTracker and you'll see there were posts during the weekend by PhoenixMitra, but only telling us to follow the CoC. I'm also guessing it was someone from the community team informing the devs about the ongoing exploits.
Weekend or not, they need to inform us about the situation if they're starting mass-banning their community. You can't do that without putting up a notice.

I've heard similar things. A lot of the ones doing the Demonize mechanic in the Scarlet Empress encounter gets banned without breaking any rules. My own raid is going later today, will update the thread if anyone of us receives the hammer. Meanwhile, other ET raids don't even dare go to the last boss.
Imagine not being able to complete the latest raid because of dumbass bans. Love the transparency from this company.

It's clear that some sort of "mass-ban" is going on and I just cannot comprehend that you haven't mentioned it at all. You need to inform us of what's happening. China's localization by Tencent Games and even 4Game, the Russian localization, has already informed their playerbase about the ongoing issues stating that they received the news from you.
This is ludicrous. Make a ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ post about it. I get that there's probably ongoing discussion about the appropiate course of action, but in the meantime, inform us of what you're doing right now and that more information is on the way.

I hate to sound dramatic and all, but the game is already destroyed. The continuous mistreatment of this game won't stop. It's definitely unfortunate to see what happened to the game considering it could have been amazing given the right publishers.

Sounds pretty good if the drop rates of the three Hunter’s Refuge Treasures are decent. The cost of entering Hunter's Refuge is a decent (although temporary) way to get some gold out of the system from whales and having Transformation Stones be a guaranteed drop is probably good to try and fix the cost of TS and PTS on the Marketplace. Thanks!
Only thing I have to complain about is the Awakened Thunder Talisman and Awakened Morning Star Talisman. They're the equivalent of you putting True Tiger/Dragon Soul in Treasure Trove, literally no one will get it because of how low the % is. I can see a trashy mobile gacha game pulling stuff like that, i.e saying there's an ~amazing~ chance to get a strong item, but it feels incredibly scummy when a game like Blade & Soul does it. It would be nice with transparency by revealing the percentage rates so that some players don't spend obscene amounts of time trying to get one of the Talisman items without success.
We've learned this from old events. Any rewards of importance from an event chest, like the current Secret Santa Gift Box's chance to get PTS/Oils/Elder Scale (etc etc) will barely ever have its good items drop. It's hard to take this company as a serious publisher when you pull this kind of stuff.

In Hangar 0's X-Cavator 500 encounter, the attack Great Spiral Spin prompted by the end of the 90/60/30% mechanics is bugged. I have only verified the bug's existence in Hard Mode.
Each phase, the mechanics are repeated three times. Failing the mechanics twice, inflicting a stack of Gyro Explosion on the boss, will cause a Berserk Rage. Successfully executing the mechanics both twice and thrice (in other words, passing mechanics but not perfectly and passing mechanics perfectly) will have the boss start its Great Spiral Spin attack, but regardless of the party's mechanic execution, the attack cannot be resisted with a Blade Master/Blade Dancer's party protection or a personal resist skill. From my experience, the first of the total five hits of Great Spiral Spin is covered by a BM/BD's resist skill, but disappears right after.
Is this intended? It feels like the equivalent of failing mechanics in Easy Mode causing the phase end attack to inflict knockback regardless of resists. In Hard Mode though? Failing mechanics wipes the party and executing the mechanics starts a normal, resistable, three-hit or five-hit AoE.
Hope that's detailed enough. I'd be happy to describe or showcase the issue in more detail if needed.

The fairly recent cost adjustment to overall equipment slots are a bit of a mess. I believe plenty has been said about this, but I really hope there's some changes coming as soon as possible. Personally, for me to upgrade from Thornbreaker 3-6 and Awakened Champion 2-True Champion, it would cost me 24x Premium Transformation Stones. Because of the overall equipment upgrade requirements being shifted to Transformation Stones and Premium Transformation Stones making the prices go up by a ton, it would end up costing me around 15,000 gold.
Can I afford it? Yeah. Is it reasonable? Absolutely not. The whole shift to TS and PTS seem like one of those ideas which sounded good in theory but no one realized that, well, a huge sudden need of said items would make the price of the item skyrocket since it's obviously not easier to obtain said items. The ongoing market inflation because of an item production draught alongside shortsighted cost changes are just plain bad for the game. The amount of active players don't receive enough materials to keep the economy afloat and as always, there's a large number of players who tend to play the market which only makes matters worse. I'd also argue that it's an effect of players hoarding out of the concern that prices will increase even more in the future, despite the fact that the amount of players who are able to hoard due to the lack of supply is low in the first place. Those few giant fat whales with millions of gold (actually not an overstatement) could probably ruin the market by completely emptying if they so wanted though, so please be wary that changes are needed, and they're needed sooner rather than later.
There has been changes in the past to increase supply and decrease cost, and sure, it did work, but only temporarily. I think that part of the Auto Fishing was introduced as a way to get money out of the game, and while it was great, please be more drastic. Ultimately, my own founding is as follows: acquisition of materials have been made too rare, you've made items made from crafting and transmutation too expensive resulting in money being less worth. After that you reduced the overall gold acquisition so that old players have tons while new ones struggle to catch up which is only amplified because of the increasing item upgrade costs.
That said, I'm terrible when it comes to economics in general, so it would be greatly appreciated if there is there any piece of information that could be shared with us regarding the current situation and the plans for dealing with upgrade costs and the current state of the Marketplace.
Thanks in advance.

The posts for the scheduled maintenances have incorrect information in them. I don't mean the patch notes themselves, but the posts on the forum detailing maintenance duration and the like. As an example, copied from the maintenance on the 18th of December:
I'm sure most people get what the actual change is, but from the sound of it, it's as if a change would be that Received Items now do deliver inconsistent quantity. Not that important, but would be nice if the changes were actually correct. Just wanted to point this out since I've noticed a lot of it recently. An added "Fixed an issue where Received Items delivers inconsistent quantity [...]" would be enough.

Thanks for peeking in @Amraith :)
I'm inclined to believe you along with your team does both read and acknowledge numerous issues that are present in the game and although it's impossible to know what how many different teams that look into each issue there is, I'm inclined to believe that at least you as our publishers are doing what you can. That said, it remains imperative that each division within the production of Blade & Soul takes accountability for making sure the product upholds the very same standards that you set out prior the launch way back in 2016.
I understand that the community representatives here are quite limited to change other parts of the overall business, but it would mean a lot if you could be more transparent regarding how you work and why there's a major lack of liability when it comes to both bugs as discussed here or simply the overall presented feedback not being implemented. From the company reviews that I've read for NCSOFT, the theme seems to be that while the games are great, the management is seemingly incompetent and the organization structure remains as one with extreme bureaucracy with decision making being mainly centralized. If that holds true for a game like this, I can fully see why the issues plaguing the western game version would be ignored.
Since the next Producer's Letters is incoming, it would mean so, so much to at least mention that 2019 was a year with a lot of wrongdoings. Explain what went wrong and the steps that (I dearly hope) you've taken to counter it. Shortly before this year's launch of Legacy of the Hongmoon Clan in March, despite producer Jonathan Lien and community manager Bethany Stout left, you did such an incredible job of being transparent and helpful to us. The launch of the update was catastrophic, yes, but at least you maintained an open communication. Please, more of that. As it stands, the entire production behind the west's game feels dishonest and insincere.